Foolish might have been the man who built his house on sand, but apparently foolish too was the man who built his dessert empire on dumb meringues, apparently.
Dessert overlord Adriano Zumbo‘s chain of patisseries has reportedly been placed into voluntary administration amid spiralling debt that could total as much as $10 million.
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The 36-year-old chef’s three chief businesses, which trades collectively as The Zumbo Group, was handed over to insolvency service DW Advisory on July 22nd, according to reports published by NewsCorp.
Zumbo’s businesses currently operate 8 patisserie locations in both Sydney and Melbourne, while his larger operations employ around 130 people.
Among the creditors Zumbo reportedly owes money to are a major bank and the Australian Tax Office, according to DW Advisory officials.
The company’s administrators assert that, for the time being, it will remain business-as-usual in Zumbo’s locations while the viability of his operations is assessed.
We haven’t closed any stores down at this stage, we are still trading the business in all of the existing retail stores while we still assess the viability of the business.
We are hopeful that there will be able to be a restructure through a deed of company arrangement, we will be investigating the affairs of the company over the next couple of weeks.
The famed dessert chef’s career skyrocketed after a series of guest chef appearances on MasterChef Australia which introduced the feared croquembouche to the competition.
After that, Zumbo managed to parlay those appearances into a starring role in his own cooking competition series Zumbo’s Just Desserts.
He has not publicly issued comment on this matter as of yet.
